Linguistic Processing of Accented Speech Across the Lifespan

Language Translation Device Market Projected To Reach a Revised Size Of USD 3,166 2 Mn By 2032

regional accents present challenges for natural language processing.

White, L., Mattys, S. L., and Wiget, L. Language categorization by adults is based on sensitivity to durational cues, not rhythm class. 66, 665–679. White, K. S., and Aslin, R. N.

regional accents present challenges for natural language processing.

In most infant/toddler accent perception studies, it is assumed that children should come to ignore talker accent just as they ignore voice (see e.g., Best et al., 2009). For example, a similar developmental timeline has been posited for the two in word segmentation tasks (see regional accents present challenges for natural language processing. Schmale and Seidl, 2009; Schmale et al., 2011, for further discussion). Several factors could explain differences in results like this one. First, perhaps different studies sample from a diverse population without considering variables that would structure this variability.

Accent Perception in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Houston, D. M., and Jusczyk, P. W. The role of talker-specific information in word segmentation by infants. 26, 1570–1582. Hay, J., and Drager, K.

Emergent research also goes beyond these perceptual abilities, by assessing links with production and the relative contributions of linguistic knowledge and general cognitive skills. We conclude by underlining points of convergence across ages, and the gaps left to face in future work. Finally, while hearing status has not been found to impact processing in older adults, it has not been explored in any other age group.

Pure exposure, however, is not the only factor affecting accent processing. The correlations between production and perception can even be tracked longitudinally. Evans and Iverson (2007) collected production and perception measures over a period of 2 years from students who had moved from northern England to attend college in southern England. Results showed that students who displayed more southern English accent features in their own speech also exhibited better adaptation to southern speech in perception tasks.

Kinzler, K. D., Dupoux, E., and Spelke, E. S. The native ChatGPT language of social cognition. U.S.A. 104, 12577–12580.

Linguistic processing of accented speech across the lifespan

Cloud-based deployment is experiencing a high CAGR in the Text-to-Speech market due to its inherent advantages aligning with contemporary business demands. Cloud solutions offer unparalleled scalability, allowing organizations to dynamically manage resources based on fluctuating demands without hefty upfront investments in infrastructure. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The subscription-based nature of TTS services ensures continuous updates, improved customization options, and simplified maintenance, appealing to businesses seeking hassle-free and up-to-date solutions. As the market emphasizes accessibility, flexibility, and seamless integration, TTS services emerge as a pivotal and dominant offering, catering to the evolving needs of a wide range of industries.

35, 1950–1960. Martin, C. S., Mullennix, J. W., Pisoni, D. B., and Summers, W. V. (1989). Effects of talker variability ChatGPT App on recall of spoken word lists. 15, 676–684. Magner, T. F. The study of foreign languages in China.

Stuffed toys and speech perception. Linguistics 48, 865–892. Gordon-Salant, S., Yeni-Komshian, G. H., Fitzgibbons, P. J., and Schurman, J. Short-term adaptation to accented English by younger and older adults. 128, 200–204. Burda, A. N., Scherz, J. A., Hageman, C. F., and Edwards, H. T.

Effects of Exposure

Some previous work has reported that older adults experience greater difficulty when faced with multiple talkers (Sommers, 1996), fast speech (Janse, 2009), and speech in noise (e.g., Kalikow et al., 1977) than younger adults. Thus, one could expect older adults to experience even greater difficulties than younger adults when presented with accented speech. It does not appear that the absence of a difference across age groups could be due to a ceiling effect (Adank et al., 2009; put forward a similar argument to explain data collected from younger listeners). Indeed, while the addition of multi-talker babble yielded age differences in one study (Gordon-Salant et al., 2010b), it did not in another (Ferguson et al., 2010).

More generally, this perceptual work demonstrates that children can perform metalinguistic tasks that require a reliance on accent. Infants, children, and adults may all experience different challenges in processing unfamiliar accents. Learning how to adapt to unfamiliar accents is necessary for efficient language processing, given the variety of accents that surrounds us.

regional accents present challenges for natural language processing.

Here, we limit our summaries to a few representative studies documenting both the initial processing costs and the adaptive processes involved in recognizing the linguistic content of accented speech. North America commands a larger share of the Text-to-Speech market due to its highly developed technological landscape, including major players in the IT and software industry. The region’s early adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies contributes to the robust ecosystem for voice synthesis. The prevalence of English as a primary language further solidifies North America’s dominance, with a vast market for English language models.

Although we cannot attempt it here, we hope a future review will explore similarities and differences between bi-accentual/bi-dialectal and bilingual acquisition. Other work focuses on the effects of long-term exposure. For example, native speakers of British English show less difficulty processing American English speakers’ productions of medial-/t/as a tap (“ciddy” for “city”) if they have lived in the United States (Scott and Cutler, 1984). Sumner and Samuel (2009) studied the processing of r-final words spoken by talkers of rhotic dialects (General American English/GA), who pronounce the final/r/, or non-rhotic dialects (New York City English/NYC), who do not pronounce the final /r/ (“bakuh” for “baker”). This study used a priming paradigm and tested listeners who were either familiar or not with NYC English. For all participants, a target was never primed as well if it had a prime of a mismatching dialect, showing an overall cost of switching dialects from prime to target.

The degree of similarity in cognitive gains exhibited by bilingual listeners and those with exposure to two within-language accents is likely dependent on the similarity in their life experiences. That is, children who are routinely exposed to two variants, but grow up to speak only one variant may experience lower internal conflict and require lower strength of inhibition than those who come to speak two variants. For example, one may argue that it should be more difficult to tease apart Spanish from Catalan, which are very similar at the phonological level, than native English from a heavily French-accented English, since French differs from English even at the rhythmic level. Thus, perhaps the degree of perceptual difference between the varieties might also be a factor, even when the child grows up to speak only one variety.

These alternatives could be explored by simplifying the task for younger infants (for example, presenting a single word, which reduces memory load), or by increasing processing demands in older infants (e.g., through the addition of a concurrent task). If either of these manipulations reverts previous preference patterns (disappear in younger infants, reappear in older infants), then processing resources (rather than a metalinguistic reinterpretation of language varieties) would be implicated. Up to this point, we have discussed how infants and toddlers recognize wordforms in unfamiliar linguistic varieties. But a key point in accent accommodation is how we come to realize that two different pronunciations map onto the same referent. This topic has been breached using intermodal preference paradigms, where a wordform is heard at the same time that two pictures are displayed in the visual modality. Typically, toddlers will look longer at the target (the picture matching the wordform heard) than the competitor (another image on the screen that does not match the wordform).

Furthermore, the surge in demand for mobile devices, coupled with increased government spending on education, presents additional opportunities for market expansion. In view of the wealth of this work, we do not endeavor to be comprehensive in the present section, but focus instead on lines of research that allow comparisons with the literature from other age groups summarized below. The interested reader is referred to Floccia et al. (2006) and Samuel and Kraljic (2009) for more detailed reviews focusing on adult perception of accented speech.

regional accents present challenges for natural language processing.

The AI-powered newsroom also can gauge reader sentiment and opinions about the content. By analysing user feedback, news organisations can better understand their audience’s reactions and tailor their reporting accordingly. AI’s ability to generate captivating headlines and optimise content delivery is another significant advantage. By analysing the reading patterns and preferences of the audience, AI can tailor content to suit individual readers, increasing their interest and engagement with the news. Creating generative AI, like ChatGPT, presents more challenges than virtual AI avatars, which primarily involve converting written words into audio. Meanwhile, generative AI requires the analysis of recorded audio and video data to achieve natural facial expressions and gestures.

Challenges

However, it also exhibited some limitations, including the propagation of misinformation and the reliance on existing story ideas from different media sources. The AI reporter struggled to produce completely new and creative content. Moreover, AI’s connection to various databases allows it to verify the authenticity of news stories, reducing the need for manual fact-checking and enhancing the accuracy of reporting.

(PDF) ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LANGUAGE LEARNING AND COMMUNICATION: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION – ResearchGate

(PDF) ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LANGUAGE LEARNING AND COMMUNICATION: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION.

Posted: Sat, 24 Jun 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

More general research on implicit learning and aging suggests that older adults may adopt compensatory strategies, which are often sufficient, except for particularly challenging tasks (for a recent review, see Rieckmann and Bäckman, 2009). Speech recognition involves a machine or program’s capability to interpret dictation or recognize and execute spoken commands. Text-to-speech (TTS) technology, on the other hand, converts digital text into spoken language.

Text-to-Speech market in Asia Pacific region to exhibit highest CAGR during the forecast period

The next step was to validate these findings, assumptions, and sizing with industry experts across the value chain through primary research. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches were employed to estimate the complete market size. After that, market breakdown and data triangulation were used to estimate the market size of segments and subsegments. The education sector is experiencing a high CAGR in the Text-to-Speech market due to the increasing recognition of its transformative impact on learning experiences. Text-to-speech technology has become instrumental in addressing diverse learning needs, catering to students with visual impairments, reading difficulties, or those who benefit from auditory reinforcement.

This phrase captures the fact that variation occurs along a continuum, whereas hard boundaries are derived from political, social, and historical reasons, rather than true linguistic distance between two linguistic varieties. At an empirical level, it is not rare to find two “languages” that are closer to each other (in terms of mutual intelligibility and ease of processing) than two “dialects” of the same language. One often cited example is Dutch and German, intuitively conceived as two languages in spite of the fact that they are fairly mutually intelligible; in contrast, Taishanese and Pinghua (“dialects” of Cantonese, itself a “dialect” of Chinese) are not mutually intelligible.

  • Spoken word recognition and lexical representation in very young children.
  • Moreover, while some indices of executive function can predict adaptation, they might not be the same in younger and older adults (Jesse and Janse, 2012).
  • Luce, P. A., and Lyons, E. A.
  • Thus, this work cannot currently replace research investigating the potential benefits of short-term, laboratory-based exposure to a natural accent, which provides valuable evidence.
  • More generally, this perceptual work demonstrates that children can perform metalinguistic tasks that require a reliance on accent.

To meet these expectations, industries are increasingly integrating AI into their operations. At the heart of this evolution lies conversational AI, a specialized subset of AI that enhances the user experience.

  • Adopting AI advancements such as Machine Learning (ML) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can revolutionize customer service.
  • Bradlow and Bent (2008) provided important evidence concerning when accent adaptation is more likely to occur.
  • But there are many other alternatives; to give just one example, they may have also undergone experience-independent advancements in cognitive skills recruited by the task, such as selective attention and working memory.
  • Text-to-speech technology has become instrumental in addressing diverse learning needs, catering to students with visual impairments, reading difficulties, or those who benefit from auditory reinforcement.
  • Other work suggests that toddlers also benefit from more naturalistic exposure to a complex accent Schmale et al. (2012) exposed toddlers to brief stories with no accompanying visual referent.

A second key contribution of the infant literature pertains to the mechanisms triggered by exposure to a novel accent. The questions of how and whether listeners of different ages cope with accentual variation at phonological levels where lexical feedback is irrelevant (e.g., intonation) could be investigated in future work. Before the age of 6 months, infants seem to have learned accent-specific information about their most commonly encountered variant that allows them to discriminate and prefer it to unfamiliar variants (e.g., Kitamura et al., 2006). Even holding maturation constant, brief exposure enables toddlers to cope with accent changes (e.g., Schmale et al., 2012). Finally, toddlers are better able to recognize words produced in the linguistic variety spoken widely in their local community, even when they primarily hear another variety at home (Floccia et al., 2012).

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